William Shakespeare 's Poetry Of Sonnets

Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets in his lifetime; the 56 sonnets being one of many. This sonnet in particular addresses a “fair youth”. Love is one of the major themes throughout the sonnets, as seen in Sonnets 1, 18, and 29, as well as many other works. Shakespeare is very well known in the literary community for his precise word choice, which often has deeper meaning than simply surface level. Throughout Sonnet 56, Shakespeare uses literary techniques such as comparison, personification, and symbolism to portray the meaning and emotion of love.

In the romantic era, British authors and poets focused on nature and its influence. Two of those poets, Charlotte Smith and William Wordsworth, wrote many pieces on the beauty of nature and their personal experiences with the beaches of England. In “Far on the sands” and “It is a beauteous evening,” Smith and Wordsworth describe their respective experiences on the shore at sunset. Both authors use structure, theme, allusions, and imagery to effectively convey their perceptions of nature. While the sonnets share a setting and the topics of nature and tranquility, Smith’s has a focus on introspection and Wordsworth’s is centered around religion. These have different focuses which achieve different effects on the reader.

Known as the leader in classical poetry and drama, English writer William Shakespeare, captures the passion and emotions that the romance and depths of the human heart experiences in life. This is especially shown in his vast collection of sonnets which exemplified the “carpe diem” ideology of the period, and the love that one can have for another. Two of the most famous of Shakespeare’s works, Sonnet 55 [Not Marble, nor the gilded monuments] and sonnet 116 [Let me not to the marriage of true minds], are no exception to this theme in poetry. Both of these sonnets exemplify the love that the narrator has for a mistress in his life, and how he defines his love for them. Throughout both poems, Shakespeare conveys his purpose through the

Both of these Petrarchan sonnets have a loose iambic pentameter, with a fairly simple and regular rhyme scheme, which appears at first to be a structure that constructs freedom and space. However, the fact that they have a form of structure at all, and are not merely blank verse, hints at a sense of cyclic monotony and, therefore, entrapment. Prefatory Sonnet is more purposefully structured than Lines Composed Upon Westminster Bridge; line thirteen (“who have felt the weight of too much liberty”) is written in contrasting trochaic meter, in turn emphasising the false perception of space created by people who think themselves surrounded by it. Each poem is monosyllabic in several places, such as the lines: “nuns fret not”, “should find short solace there, as I have found”, “earth has not any thing to shew more fair” and “at his own sweet will”. This emphasises polysyllabic words, like “narrow”, “prison”, “sundry”, “scanty”, “touching”, “garment” “solace” and “never”, which all highlight the sense of proximity and lacking that both poems inconspicuously convey. Using repetitive capital letters where not needed, Wordsworth draws attention towards words such as “cells”, “wheel”, and “city”; these industrially-associated (man-made) nouns refer to the heavy feeling of congestion that industrial places evoke. The capital letters also create a barrier in the structure of the poems, which adds to the cyclic limitations of space that they suggest. Jonathan M. Hess also argues that

There is a constant theme of love found consistently within many forms of literature. The reoccurring theme of love is indicated within two poems, Sonnet 116 written by Shakespeare and Cinderella by Anne Sexton. Love is like a diamond, extremely rare and difficult to find. Shakespeare and Anne Sexton surpassed many other author’s in being able to capture the theme of love in their pieces of literature.

     The sonnet, being one of the most traditional and recognized forms of poetry, has been used and altered in many time periods by writers to convey different messages to the audience. The strict constraints of the form have often been used to parallel the subject in the poem. Many times, the first three quatrains introduce the subject and build on one another, showing progression in the poem. The final couplet brings closure to the poem by bringing the main ideas together. On other occasions, the couplet makes a statement of irony or refutes the main idea with a counter statement. It leaves the reader with a last impression of what the author is trying to say.

Sonnets 5 and 6 from Shakespeare’s Sonnets, a collection of sonnets written by William Shakespeare, represent themes such as procreation, the passage of time, beauty, love and mortality. Shakespeare’s sophisticated use of rhetorical methods, persuasive techniques, metaphors, repetition, structural framing, combined with his aesthetic values create a parallel in these two sonnets. In both sonnets, he tries to convince the handsome young man to marry and beget children so that the youth 's incredible beauty will not die when the youth dies. While both sonnets share similar themes, metaphors, and structures, sonnet 6 is a continuation of sonnet 5, expanding on the idea of the preservation of beauty in a more dramatic and critical tone.

Shakespeare’s ninety-first sonnet continues to address the young man to whom he has been writing the procreation sonnets. The theme of this sonnet is the incomparable value of the young man’s love. For Shakespeare, the pleasure of the young man’s love is greater than any other pleasure. His rejection of worldly pleasures for the greater joy of love also appears to highlight a distinction Shakespeare wants to make between true wealth and poverty. In doing so, he insinuates a social criticism about the notion of what is truly valuable in this world. Shakespeare emphasizes these points through the structure of the poem, which employs repetition and chiasmus, and through diction.

Shakespeare’s sonnet 60 expresses the inevitable end that comes with time and uses this dark truth to express his hopefulness that his poetry will carry his beloved’s beauty and worth into the future in some way so that it may never die. This love poem is, as all sonnets are, fourteen lines. Three quatrains form these fourteen lines, and each quatrain consists of two lines. Furthermore, the last two lines that follow these quatrains are known as the couplet. This sonnet has the rhyme scheme of ABAB CDCD EFEF GG, as most Shakespearean sonnets follow. In each of the three quatrains, Shakespeare discusses a different idea. In this particular sonnet, the idea is how time continues to pass on, causing everything to die. The couplet connects these ideas to one central theme, this theme being Shakespeare’s hope for the beauty of his beloved’s immortality through his poetry’s continuation into future times.

From the public life of humanist while at court to now private. The Petrarchan sonnet poetry with lines with rhyme schemes made up of eight lines of octave and sestet of six lines. Petrarch poetry deals with the rejection of unrequited love. The Petrarchan sonnets, flows by respond to each other with sexual frustration due to rejection. Petrarch elaborates figures of speech to express his emotions. Phillip Sidney is a noble who uses poetry for personal use. Sidney uses personae to establish poetry can teach a human mind how to act. We are in a period where everything happens in one room. Sidney wants to show poetry is art and life. Sidney shows that by him writing poetry he is learning how to act. Sidney poetry writes against people that thought poetry was a waste of time and is defining poetry as the first source of dispelling ignorance of the mind.

The majority of Elizabethan sonnets reflect two major themes: time and love. William Shakespeare, too, followed this convention, producing 154 sonnets, many of which deal with the usual theme of love. Because the concept of love is in itself so immense, Shakespeare found several ways to capture the essence of his passion. Therefore, in his poetry he explored various methods and used them to describe the emotions associated with his love for a mysterious "dark lady." These various ideas and views resulted in a series of sonnets that vibrantly depicts his feelings of true, undying love for his lady. Instead of making the topic less interesting, as some might expect, Shakespeare's myriad approaches

Shakespeare examines love in two different ways in Sonnets 116 and 130. In the first, love is treated in its most ideal form as an uncompromising force (indeed, as the greatest force in the universe); in the latter sonnet, Shakespeare treats love from a more practical aspect: it is viewed simply and realistically without ornament. Yet both sonnets are justifiable in and of themselves, for neither misrepresents love or speaks of it slightingly. Indeed, Shakespeare illustrates two qualities of love in the two sonnets: its potential and its objectivity. This paper will compare and contrast the two sonnets by Shakespeare and show how they represent two different attitudes to love.

In Shakespeare’s Sonnets, the pain experienced emotionally and physically contributes to the realistic nature of his words. Specifically addressing the Dark Lady, the speaker expresses a more mature love unlike the relationship between him and the young man. Readers are warned about the dangers of lust in the love triangle, but the speaker is content with the Dark Lady’s affairs rather than the young man’s. In Sonnet 138, the speaker says, “On both sides thus is simple truth suppressed/But wherefore say not I that I am old?/Oh love’s best habit is in seeming trust” (8-10). In their relationship, love is therefore a mutual understanding of deception. The Dark Lady ignores that he is old and considers him to be young and the speaker ignores that she is cheating on him by not bringing up her faithfulness. What ties these two characters together is

The sonnets of Shakespeare often explore the deeper musings of the male narrator as he catalogues his continuous waxing on intrapersonal and interpersonal matters. Sonnet 80 does this beautifully as it discusses the narrator’s deepest fear that, “my [the narrator’s] love was my dismay.” The profoundly beautiful couplet perfectly accompanies the prior three quatrains, and a sailing metaphor is used throughout. The narrator, whom is addressing the young man, brings up his biggest quandary (the other “spirit”) as he attempts to express himself to the young man. The entire sonnet is supported by the idea of sailing and boats, and, yet, the narrator and reader both know that he (the narrator) will inevitably encounter a shipwreck.

A sonnet is a poem of fourteen lines that rhyme in a particular pattern. William Shakespeare’s sonnets were the only non-dramatic poetry that he wrote. Shakespeare used sonnets within some of his plays, but his sonnets are best known as a series of one hundred and fifty-four poems. The series of one hundred and fifty-four poems tell a story about a young aristocrat and a mysterious mistress. Many people have analyzed and contemplated about the significance of these “lovers”. After analysis of the content of both the “young man” sonnets and the “dark lady sonnets”, it is clear that the poet, Shakespeare, has a great love for the young man and only lusts after his mistress.